Dracula

If you read contemporary reviews of Dracula, you'll find it was critically panned by the average reader. Some of the other names of the day considered it a sleeper classic but otherwise the real cultural value of Dracula comes from its Hammer incarnations. Which is entirely understandable, as the weight of Stoker's laborious prose prevents any sort of impression to form in the reader's mind beyond the desire to sleep – or strangle the heroines for their stupidity.

In some sense I wish Dracula from the page had had more of an impact than the cinematic Dracula. The heavy mustache, the fierce Stygian features...they make for a much for evocative vampiric archetype than what we've in fact been left with.